Instead of attempting to review each individual update as they’re coming out, I’ve decided to just lump all subsequent updates from Tides of the Foscari onwards into main DLC releases. Thus, although this will be a review for Emergency Meeting, I’ll also be covering several updates released before and after this DLC as well.

WHITEOUT

Not much to say about this one. Pretty uninspiring, plain snow map. It’s always cool to have more content added for free but this one feels pretty barebones. I only played on it once I think.

Notably, adds an evolution for the character O’Sole Meeo, which is something I’ve noticed the last few updates have focused on. Mortaccio can transform into a big skeleton, Syuuto transforms when his main weapon is upgraded, etc.

Also adds the Glass Fandango weapon, which is good, and Defang, a powerup which renders some enemies unable to deal damage when spawned – which is useful in the late game.

SPACE 54

Decent update, fun map. New characters are whatever. New weapons are whatever. Phaser SFX is fun.

EMERGENCY MEETING

The main course, obviously.

Like anyone/everyone else I was curious to see how this DLC would even work. There’s only so much creative liberty you can take with a game like Among Us. Now that I’ve played it, uh… I guess this is probably the best we’d get.

The Among Us characters are hilariously out-of-place, but the map itself – Polus Replica – is actually pretty good. Incorporating time sensitive objectives to avoid penalties was a good idea and makes the stage marginally less brainless than levels prior.

The weapons on offer range from pretty good to pretty bad. I think the main thing is that with Mt. Moonspell and Tides of the Foscari, although some weapons weren’t incredible, they at least evolved with passive items which were already part of the item pool. Like sure, the Mirage Robe or Silver Wind aren’t my first picks, but because they evolve with the Attactorb and Pummarola respectively, they can also pair with Santa Water and Garlic. In Emergency Meeting, every new weapon requires a new passive item – each a miniature crewmate.

At first, I thought dedicating an entire passive item slot to each new weapon was a bad decision, until I realized that the mini crewmates are “consumed” after their respective weapon is evolved, freeing up their passive slot. It’s actually a good tradeoff, and because the miniature crewmates’ offensive abilities persist after being consumed, it’s like earning another weapon/passive slot after both are fully upgraded. It’s at least interesting.

Some of the new weapons aren’t super useful until they’re evolved, and in one instance – in the case of Science Rocks – I think the evolution is definitively worse, Rocket Science requiring players to participate in a timed Leapfrog-ass minigame to get a screen nuke that completely blinds you for 5-10 seconds at a time. What were they thinking?

Anyways I think this DLC is okay! Just kinda doesn’t have much item/build synergy outside of the included map which makes most of it feel a little superfluous. Doesn’t mesh super well with anything. Which is also…

ADVENTURES

…kinda where Adventures comes in.

I was interested to see what Adventures would even be. On the tin, it’s a more streamlined, straightforwardly stage-to-stage approach to Vampire Survivors’ gameplay loop. And at first, I was pleasantly surprised!

It’s strange how scaling back all of the extra, bitrate-killing, seizure-inducing nonsense actually makes for a much better experience overall. Adventures capitalizes on the self-containedness of itself, requiring players to start from scratch, unlock every weapon, item, and upgrade all over again, and even limits each adventure to a handful of playable characters.

This gives each “adventure” some personality. Some stages even have reduced time limits so moving from one level to the next is pretty breezy. The unlock requirements for each stage also require side objectives instead of simply focusing on survival. It’s a good change of pace.

Unfortunately, it highlights a lot of the game’s shortcomings as well. Because the game resets your upgrades, players will usually spend a lot of their first stages without skip, banish, or reroll unlocked. If you focus solely on unlocking all weapons/items, your item pool will quickly be oversaturated, and the RNG will usually force you to pick weapons/items that aren’t optimal for your character.

Usually this isn’t a problem in the base game because players will have unlocked the necessary upgrades (skip/banish/reroll) to force the RNG in their favor. However, when you’re playing without these upgrades unlocked, I do think it really underlines how frustrating the early game can be.

Really, this would be solved by giving players unlimited Skips instead of nickel-and-diming them to Skip upgrades. Another Survivors game called (literally) “Yet Another Zombie Survivors” does this, and even in that game, because the item pool is so limited, it hardly feels necessary, but they give it to you anyways. Why doesn’t Vampire Survivors just let you skip upgrades for free??

I’m not 100% sure how the RNG is supposed to work but I’ve gone entire stages without the passive item I wanted appearing once. Maybe this is an outlier case but I hadn’t even unlocked all the weapons at this point, so I don’t understand how this could even happen.

Anyways, there’s no achievements associated with Adventures, so your mileage may vary here. I chose to complete all four adventures and I thought they were fine. It’s certainly more stuff to do, tacked on an extra 20 hours onto my 100 hour playtime.

My main complaint is that after you’ve finished an adventure, all you get is more gold to use in the base game – and not even a crazy amount, just like 10K-15K gold after an adventure is cleared IIRC. Then the game asks if you want to “ascend,” which lets you reset the adventure (and I assume the award?) but with extra greed/luck/growth/curse.

Am I the only one who’s confused about the purpose of this mode? The gold you’d earn by completing each objective in this mode pales in comparison to the gold you’d earn by playing normally, let alone using an AFK gold farm. I don’t get it!

There’s almost no utility to clearing adventures in terms of meta-progression. It feels pointless.

I still think they’re interesting. I think they’d be more interesting if ascending unlocked better rewards, or their completion was tied to unlocking specific relics/weapons/items in the base game. I don’t know. Needed more time in the oven. That’s all I’ve got.

So overall, does Vampire Survivors hit its stride with these latest updates? I’m not sure! On one hand, the free updates with new maps offer some new content and much needed variety, the actual paid DLC is a novelty, and adventures are… something! It’s definitely more content!

As I started writing this, the latest DLC – a Contra collab named “Operation Guns” – was announced, and is due early next month. I’ll probably give my thoughts on that, too. Will this next DLC drastically change my opinion of Vampire Survivors? Probably not.

It’s more Vampire Survivors. So there you have it.

Not a review just taking this out of rotation for now. I enjoyed what I played of it, so atmospheric and otherworldly in a way the original Doom games weren't. Enemy variety was kind of lacking. Some of the later levels got a little too heavy with the puzzles. Last one I remember playing had a Shell Game that would spawn in enemies if I picked the wrong one, and I just started quicksaving + quickloading and I still don't think I ever picked the right one so I have to wonder what I was doing wrong. Idk just not the kinda game I want to play at the moment but I love every other Doom game so I'll definitely pick this back up at some point and give a full writeup